Chapter 4
Four
B ecky was so steamed she could hardly stand it. The idea, the nerve, the absolute gall of Rodney to show up at the barn and think that she wouldn’t have anything to say about the fact that he’d been radio silent for five whole years.
Despite the pleading texts she sent to him. The letters that had been returned unopened, the phone calls she made that had gone to some kind of recording saying that the number had been disconnected.
And now, and now he decides to come and talk to her?
Ha. Like she would ever.
Except she had to.
The one nice thing about horses, well, one of the many nice things about horses in her opinion, was they forced a person to calm down. To be deliberate in their movements, to not allow their emotions to affect their actions.
Becky remembered this as Velvet, the least calm of all of her horses, trotted around the round pen.
She was lunging her, as she did almost on a daily basis, to keep her horses in shape and to get a little exercise.
She wished she could put them out in the pasture, but currently there was a crust on the ice.
Her horses would most likely break through because of their weight, but she didn’t want to chance the fact that if they didn’t, they could slide and break something.
She personally had made sure that the round pen had been cleared of ice as well as snow. Her horses were too valuable to her for her to chance allowing them to get hurt. Of course, it made extra work for her, but it was worth it.
She had as many house-cleaning jobs as she could, and she picked up any extra jobs that were available anywhere near Raspberry Ridge.
Her pickup was not very reliable, and she couldn’t afford to fix it if it broke down, so the only time she ran it was when she had to go to Blueberry Beach to pick up feed.
She added groceries to that, because she thought it made more sense for her to make one trip, rather than one for the horses and an additional one for food for herself.
But the beans and rice she bought last month were holding out nicely.
Even if they were getting rather old with nothing else to go with them.
Although she got coffee, too. She did splurge for that. She felt like she needed it though, in these cold temperatures. She had to do something to help keep herself warm. She’d lost twenty pounds over the winter, and she hadn’t had that much extra to begin with.
Still, she had to calm herself down in order to work with horses properly and not upset them. So she tried to think rationally about the situation.
She didn’t want to process the fact that her sister had cancer. Apparently a not-good form of it, if they were worried about it “exploding.” Which she had never heard of, but her sister had said that those weren’t the words that the doctor had used exactly, it was just her takeaway from it.
That made her want to drop everything and race to her sister’s side.
But she was still faced with the fact that she didn’t have anyone to take care of her horses.
She had a couple of people she thought she could ask, but it was going to be a big inconvenience for them, especially with the hard winter they had faced so far.
Every week, there had been a snowstorm, and sometimes two.
They’d gotten more than six feet of snow, which was a record in some places, including Raspberry Ridge.
Still, she was not afraid to ask for favors, because it was her sister.
But it occurred to her, when Velvet was done and back in her stall and Jethro was on the line, that…
Rodney was going to find out just how desperate her circumstances were.
There really was no way he couldn’t. Because if they did what she wanted, which was she would keep the babies for a week, and then he would keep the babies for a week, or something along those lines, he was going to have to figure out that…
she couldn’t afford to feed herself, let alone two babies.
While her sister had work, it wasn’t a great job.
She wasn’t going to be able to shower her with money to buy things for the babies.
She was going to need formula at the very least, and after she stopped, stuck the lunge line under her arm, and googled baby formula, she understood that there was no way she was going to be able to afford to feed those babies. Just no way.
Actually, there was a way, but she didn’t want to think about that right now.
But for her sister, she would.
Still, Rodney was going to find out. He was going to see how desperate she was.
How poor, and while it didn’t really bother her, not terribly anyway, because she was doing what she always wanted to do and loved, it did bother her that he would think she wasn’t successful.
That she hadn’t done anything worthwhile with her life.
That…whatever bad thing it was he was going to think.
He would look at her and think she was a failure.
And be glad that he didn’t have anything to do with her.
Maybe that was what turned him against her in the first place. He saw that she was unmotivated and didn’t care about making money, which seemed to be his focus, more and more and more, and maybe the more he focused on it, the less she did.
Maybe she was naturally the balance to him. Without even thinking about it.
She shook her head. She did not want to think that was true in any way. She didn’t want to balance Rodney in anything. She didn’t want to do anything with him.
“Good boy, Jethro.” Jethro was the laziest of her horses. He did not move any faster than a slow walk unless she pressed him the whole time.
He was more than happy to stop and did so in his tracks. Not going one step farther than what he had to.
She walked over, rubbing under his mane at the special spot that he just loved to have scratched. Then, she wound up the lunge line, snapping the lead rope on, taking the lunge line off, before she led him back to his stall.
He towered over her, making her feel tiny, but he was so gentle, so sweet, so loving that she was not afraid, ever. Even when he was upset. Which wasn’t very often.
She couldn’t imagine life without her beloved horses.
She finished, checking down over her outfit to make sure that she wasn’t too dirty and changing out of her barn boots into her worn pair of cowboy boots.
They weren’t nearly as warm, and they were terrible in the snow, but she was heading out to clean Vera and Dominic’s house, and she didn’t want to show up with horse poop all over her shoes.
She didn’t bother to go upstairs to get anything to eat, even though her stomach growled.
Sometimes Vera would tell her to help herself to some snacks or leftovers that she had on the counter.
Becky always tried not to eat too much, but she preferred to have her one meal of the day at the end of the day so she could go to bed with a warm, full belly.
That helped to make it so that she didn’t feel the cold in her room quite as much.
She brushed off the couple of inches of snow that they’d gotten last night from the windshield of her truck, and then she climbed in.
She always left the keys in it. There wasn’t anyone around who would steal it, but even if there were, if they were desperate enough to steal a truck that looked like hers, she kind of felt like maybe they needed it more than she did.
“Come on, Rod, start for me.”
Like an idiot, when she’d gotten the truck, she’d named it after Rodney. Rodney never went by Rod, but that’s what she called her truck.
She probably should change the name, but she identified with it now and didn’t really think of Rodney all that much when she said it.
Which was a lie. She thought of him all the time. But it was also a fact that it would be like changing a child’s name after they’d had it for ten years. They just wouldn’t seem like the same person.
Anyway, she turned the key, and the motor chugged slowly.
She pumped the gas a few times, said another prayer, and then whispered a bit of encouragement before she tried again.
It sounded a little better that time but still wasn’t catching.
“One more time. You gotta get me to town. I’m supposed to get paid today. I need money to buy feed on Wednesday. Come on.”
Maybe Rod heard her, or maybe it was the Lord, but the truck started to life.
“Thank you, Jesus.” She wasn’t confused about why the truck started. And it had nothing to do with the fact that she had it named, and she talked to it. But everything to do with the fact that sometimes God still smiled on her.
A lot of times actually. She was really happy with her life for the most part.
Well, had been happy about it until her sister’s phone call this morning.
And now, it felt like her entire life had descended into chaos.
Her sister had cancer. And was pregnant with twins.
And to make everything a million times worse, Rodney. Here.
She wanted to cry. She wasn’t really that angry at him.
She was more hurt than anything. She could admit that to herself, although she’d never admit it to him.
Or anybody else. How could he do that to her?
Why couldn’t he just say, “Hey, I’m a little more sophisticated than you are now, and you’re too childish for me”?
Even though she was almost thirty. Still, he was a good bit older than her, and he always seemed so much more mature.
Nothing had changed in that regard, considering how much of an idiot she had acted like today when she had been so angry she couldn’t even talk to him.
Why hadn’t she just talked to him in the barn, rather than deciding to meet on Wednesday, at the diner in Blueberry Beach, no less?
What was she, a glutton for punishment? It would have been far better to hash it out today, in fifteen or twenty minutes, than have to spend an entire meal eating across from him.
She gasped. She hadn’t even considered that she was going to have to pay for that meal.
She was not going to let Rodney buy it.
But she really couldn’t afford to eat in a restaurant. It was all she could do to afford the beans and rice she had at home.
She pressed her lips together. She didn’t even have his number to be able to call him to cancel.
What had she been thinking?
She put the truck in reverse after giving it a minute to warm up and laughed at herself.
She hadn’t been thinking anything. First, her sister dropped her news of her pregnancy and then her cancer, and then Rodney.
Obviously, she’d been overwhelmed. But she was an adult.
She was supposed to be able to handle being overwhelmed.
She wasn’t supposed to melt down over a day like she had.
Although, she doubted she’d ever have a day like that again.
Then she laughed. With twins—she was going to be raising twins, for a while anyway—probably today was actually a calm, easy day compared to that.
Although Rodney would be helping her. That calmed her soul a bit, until she remembered that she was going to specifically request that Rodney not co-parent with her. They would switch the kids back and forth the way divorced people did. Because she couldn’t stand to do it any other way.
She pulled into Vera’s and shut the motor off. It was so nice to feel the heat from the heater that she almost let it run a little bit.
But it would be warm in Vera’s house, and she would be able to shed some of her layers.
Typically, Vera took the kids down to the basement and played with them down there while Becky cleaned; that way, everyone was out from underfoot. Otherwise, Vera said, Becky cleaned, and her kids just came behind her and messed everything back up.
Becky really didn’t mind. It made things more interesting when the kids were underfoot, but it did make it harder as well. Because they all wanted to help too. Which was fun, but she was getting paid to clean, not follow behind a two-year-old with a mop pretending to clean.
She wasn’t sure how many kids Vera and Dominic had. It changed, since they fostered some, who went in and out. Right now, they had a toddler and a preschooler, along with their older children.
She’d never met such bighearted people, and Vera was one of her heroes.
Taking a deep breath, she yanked on the door latch and shoved her shoulder against it to get the door open. It complied with a shriek, and it almost felt like it was complaining about the cold, which Becky could not fault it for.
After this, she had the church to clean, which was always a fun and peaceful time.
And then she had to check in on Mr. Harris, who lived by himself.
He only had a woodstove for heat, and Becky made sure that he had chopped wood brought into the house every day.
He didn’t really pay her a whole lot. But she couldn’t quit that job.
Mr. Harris’s children wanted to send him to a home, and he was trying as hard as he could to stay in the home he loved.
He was in a sound mind and in pretty good physical condition, but at his age, which was eighty-eight, it was not a good idea for him to go outside and get his own firewood.
Especially in the winter after it had snowed.
So, she shoveled the walk, made sure that his paper had been brought in, and that he had firewood. Occasionally she grabbed groceries for him too. She would get the groceries more if she could afford to spend the money on it.
Seeing the day’s work stretch out ahead of her, she trudged up the walk to get started.